1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an autonomous vehicle driving system and method, and more particularly, to an autonomous vehicle driving system and method that facilitate determination of a travelable route according to a signal of a traffic light at an intersection or crosswalk and thus increase traffic efficiency.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Conventional autonomous driving systems recognize traffic lights mainly by using cameras to determine whether to travel and pass through intersections or crosswalks.
However, even though a camera with excellent recognition performance is used to recognize signals of traffic lights, signals of traffic lights cannot be recognized or another traffic light may be misrecognized depending on a location of a vehicle equipped with a camera or when the traffic lights are hidden by other vehicles.
As another method, traffic lights may be recognized by sending signal information to ambient vehicles through vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication devices installed in the traffic lights. However, an autonomous driving system cannot be aware of information regarding from which lane to which lane a vehicle may travel just by sending the signal information (this is true also for information regarding a traffic light recognized by a camera). Also, the method cannot be used at a crosswalk or an intersection where signal information from a V2X communication device is not provided.
In addition to the above problems, the convention methods have problems in that a signal is controlled with only signal timing or vehicle recognition, or signal information is unilaterally broadcast, even though an autonomous system can increase traffic efficiency through bi-directional communication with an infrastructure of a traffic light.